


A Thousand Lifetimes

by strawberryjenos



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Cryptid Chenle! AU, Depression, Minor Character Death, This contains a lot of character death, also undertones of emotional abuse in the beginning, and i'm not sorry one bit, contains mentions of death, hints at attempted suicide, just a whole lot of angst, lots of tws for people with depression and self hatred, one of the dreamies dies i'm sorry, self hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 22:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17537270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberryjenos/pseuds/strawberryjenos
Summary: Banshee!Chenle AU.A couple in China gives birth to a bouncing baby boy who shrieks and wails inconsolably. As he grows they find out he is a banshee, and Chenle wants nothing more than to be normal. Why should he be someone who kills? Why should he have to feel the pain of another life lost?





	A Thousand Lifetimes

**Author's Note:**

> (obviously i tweaked banshee lore a little bit so i could write this bc I wanted angst) i wrote this while listening to A Day In The Life by the Beatles

A young couple in China gives birth to a bouncing baby boy with a temper and the tendency to scream so loudly the neighbors would complain. If not for the way he wailed at night, you'd think he was a happy baby . In the moments where he was impossible to console, there was another family about to experience the anguish of the shrieking baby boy. 

In the years to come, the bouncing baby boy grew, but the inconsolable episodes stayed. Putting him into school proved to be difficult, as many in the cryptid community had not yet experienced the likes of a banshee. He was sent home more often than not, and eventually his parents decided to teach him at home until they learned to control his episodes. 

“You need to punish him,” the woman’s mother tells her when the boy turns 8. “He’s too old to be throwing tantrums. You’ve spent his whole life consoling him. You’re letting him think he’s in charge here!”

The boy sits in the hallway, on his way back from playing outside when he hears the annoyed words of his grandmother. Sitting against the wall with his hands clasped over his ears and tears pooling in his eyes, he feels like nobody will ever be able to understand him. Nobody understands how much it hurts when he screams. 

“Chenle, baby, what’s the matter?” his mother asks, walking out of the living room to find him sitting in the hall.

“I fell down,” he lies, voice fragile and shaking. 

She doesn’t have to know he heard. He already knows he’s a freak of nature. 

“Where’d you fall?” she asks, worried. “What hurts?”

Her hands begin to roam him, checking him for cuts or bruises.

“I fell off the porch,” he says, thinking back to the tumble he took earlier in the day. “I hit my knee.”

He wonders if she feels the same way, too. Does she think he’s broken? 

-

The next week his father has to leave on a trip and he’s left staying at his grandmother’s house. She’s strict, and she likes to make him follow a schedule while he’s there. He hates it, but he knows his parents are busy, so he behaves the best he can. 

“I will not baby you in this house, young man. I will cook you dinner and reach the things you cannot. Other than that you must behave and act like a grown up, understood?”

He nods simply. He knows not to get in her way by now. She just doesn’t understand that he hurts and that he can’t help it when he screams. If he’s quiet and patient and out of her way, maybe she won’t hate him so much anymore. Maybe if he’s nice she’ll understand that he’s broken and he doesn’t know how to fix it. 

-

He remains quiet and out of the way. He speaks when spoken to and plays quietly in the yard with the 3 toys he was allowed to bring. He picks himself up when he falls, even if he cries a little after. He doesn’t make eye contact at dinner and he bathes himself and tucks himself into bed. 

It’s always hard to sleep at grandma’s house. If he feels funny and anxious, she doesn’t have to know. He manages to sleep for a little while, but when he wakes in the middle of the night it’s with a feeling of dread. His body feels cold and he isn’t able to get a pillow over his mouth before the scream rips out of his body. He tries to choke back the wail that bubbles in his chest, but it’s a battle he knows he’ll always lose. 

Sobbing all alone in a dark room as the rain patters on the tin roof, Chenle wonders if he’ll ever be fixed. 

“Please!” he wails, though he’s not quite sure what’s he pleading for. 

The mantra is lost in a tirade of tears and sobs as Chenle feels himself slip away. He knows he’s waken his grandmother, but the distress freezes him. All he can do is cry and hope it passes soon. Surely he won’t be stuck this way for life. He can’t be, can he?

-

When his mother comes back, he overhears his grandmother insisting he get checked out by a doctor. He clutches his teddy close and gulps as he thinks about going to the hospitals. He doesn’t know what they’d do to him. The first image that comes to mind is his brain being hooked up to monitors as they ask him questions he knows he can’t answer. His mother finds him crying in the hallway again. 

-

The regular doctors are scary, and they put him in machines that rattle and make him sit completely still. It’s scary and they don’t take him out no matter how much he whimpers or panics. They make him sleep in uncomfortable beds hooked up to lots of wires, and they’re always asking him questions he doesn’t know the answer to. 

His mother notices the way he nervously picks at a loose thread on his teddy, but when her husband asks if there’s anything truly wrong with Chenle in the first place, she insists they go on. What kind of parents would they be if they didn’t try to help?

-

He turns 10 when they turn to the cryptid community for help. He’s cycled through lots of witches and doctors with funny potions and weird questions. None of them seem to think a screaming child is of any concern. Perhaps he just has night terrors, they insist. 

It isn’t until they find a centaur when he’s 11 that they get answers. It takes 6 months of meetings and weird therapy exercises. Apparently centaurs are wise, and they search the stars and wisdom of those before them to find the answer. 

Chenle’s 11 when he finds out he’s not entirely broken. He’s what’s called a banshee. He announces death. Chenle’s not so sure he wants an answer anymore. Whenever he screams, people die. 

-

“Tell him to take it back.”

“Take what back?” his mother asks on the way home. 

“I don’t wanna be a banshee, tell him to take it back.”

“He can’t take it back, baby. You were born to be a banshee. We can’t take back something you’re born with. Especially not when you’re so important and special.”

If being important and special means killing people, Chenle wants to be the most worthless person in the world. He’d rather be a normal human like the boy down the street. He doesn't want to be special anymore. Grandma’s right to hate him. He thinks he’s a bastard as much as she does. Who could love a boy who’s the bringer of death?

-

The first night he feels anxious after getting an answer is the worst. Maybe if he holds in the scream, nobody will have to die. Once his parents settle down for sleep, he sneaks out through the back door, padding through his neighborhood with bare feet. The forest is a little farther than he remembers. It’s cold out, but he doesn’t care. Curled up next to a tree by a still pond in the early hours of the morning, Chenle thinks about how many people he’s already killed. 

Daylight’s beginning to break when he feels it. He’s shaking his head, begging with whoever cursed him to just make it stop. The tears are already dribbling down his cheeks, breath hitching in his throat. He finds a stick and puts it in his mouth. He bites down with a symphony of whimpers, willing himself to be quiet. 

He can feel the splinters finding their way into his gums. He can’t be bothered to care. He deserves it, after all, for making so many people die. He tells himself the pain is bearable. Maybe if he takes the pain of all those people, they will live to see another day. He’s the one who should be dying anyways. He’s a bastard and a murderer. He doesn’t deserve a place on this planet. How could his parents still love him for what he’d done?

-

By the morning he finds himself soaked with another person dead. He curses whoever made him a banshee. He curses whoever decided his sacrifice wouldn’t work, and his chest rattles as he coughs up the water he swallowed. His gums are bleeding, the stick having broken in his mouth as the scream ripped through his chest. 

The walk back home is lonely and he’s left wondering why this world wants him alive so badly. His mother and father are screaming at him when he comes back home, clutching him and asking him where he’d been. Chenle tells them he fell in the creek by their house. They don’t have to know.

-

The centaur insists on meeting Chenle more. He gets training on how to control his screams better and it takes him 8 months to be deemed fit to go to school with the other kids in his town. He’s already made a name for himself, since he has no friends and is one of the only kids who didn’t attend school with them. 

He’s quiet, and he knows he’s the talk of the middle school. Kids stare at him in the halls like he’s a freak. He’s bullied and ridiculed for being the weird kid. His parents pull him out of school and move him to a small town in Korea. The kids are nicer there, and there are more cryptids than there were in his hometown. He has never met another banshee, but he does meet 6 boys he befriends over the course of the next few years. 

He still struggles to accept his place in this world sometimes. He still flees the house on the nights he knows he’s going to scream. He has to be taken home from school a few times when he screams in class. Nobody says much when he does. They all know what he is now. That doesn’t stop them from being wary of him. Chenle can’t say he blames them. It’d be scary to know a kid who’s the caller of death. 

He goes to therapy in hopes that he can live a more normal life. They teach him new ways to cope with what he’s meant to do. His friends don’t ask a lot of questions, and they’re careful when they do. Most of them are cryptids, too. But none of them understand no matter how much Chenle tries to tell them what it’s like to be a banshee. He still panics when they ask. He still goes home and hides under the blankets those days, wondering again if he’s truly just a broken kid. Just one who doubles as a banshee. 

-

He only goes for a dip in the lake one time after the first incident. Sacrificing himself so that others can live is not the answer to fixing him. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be fixed. His friends and parents tell him there’s nothing to fix. Chenle’s not so sure of it. No matter how happy he is, he still feels displaced in this world. 

-

“So have you ever predicted a death?” Donghyuck asks once at the lunch table. 

“That’s his fucking job, stupid,” Renjun replies, slapping Hyuck roughly. 

“I meant if he knew a certain person was gonna die!”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he says quietly. 

He’s much better off not knowing who he’s going to kill next. Death happens for a reason, after all. The world would be too crowded and miserable if everybody stayed alive for the rest of time. He’s doing the world a favor. It’s just not a favor he’s fond of, no matter how necessary it is. 

Sometimes people need to die. They’re sick and miserable and some of them aren’t in their right mind to begin with. It’s more comfortable to die, and Chenle can accept that. 

-

He grows older and he grows more content with himself. His friends are supportive and they don’t think he’s a monster. He goes on trips with them and he sleeps over at their houses and they hold him on the nights he ends up screaming and crying in the corner. They’re loving and they make fun of him and goof off and they skip class together. They treat him like he’s as normal as they are. He hasn’t been so happy in his entire life. 

Sometimes he’s younger, and they go on trips without him and Jisung. He feels like a normal kid who’s just too young to leave on weekend trips and lives under the thumb of his parents. He complains that it’s unfair and they complain that they don’t want him being out for days with no adult supervision. He’s just another teenager that he sees in the movies. He has the same arguments with his parents and he feels like maybe he isn’t so abnormal after all. 

He’s 16 and not allowed to go out with his friends to celebrate Mark’s birthday out of town. He’s jealous that they can go out and stay in hotels and throw parties by a lake near a city for the hell of it. They can drive cars and stay out later than him. 

He still gets to hang out with Jisung until 11 pm since they both didn’t get to go on the trip with Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Hyuck, and Jaemin. They’re having their last big hurrah before summer ends and they have to go back to school. 

-

He’s about to settle in for bed on Sunday night when he gets a call at 1 am. 

“Hello?” he asks, trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes. 

“Chenle.”

“Jaemin? Why are you still up?”

“Listen, I’m having a really hard time staying awake. Please stay on the phone with me. Talk to me about your day. Laugh really loud. Play rock music, I don’t care. Just stay with me, okay?”

“Jaemin, what’s the matter?”

He hears Jaemin groan and smack the steering wheel. 

“Fuck, I’m so tired.”

“Jaemin, wake somebody up! Tell them to switch you spots!”

“Shit. I can’t, Chenle. They all left before me. My mom called and I had to sort something out and stay back to help her out. Fuck, how is it possible to be this tired?”

Chenle feels his hand shake slightly as he holds the phone. He gulps, trying to wet his lips as he speaks. 

“Just pull over and get some sleep,” Chenle says, voice pleading. “The road will still be there in the morning.”

“I can’t! I have to work with my dad in the morning, I’d never make the drive back on time. Shit!”

“You okay?” Chenle asks. 

He can hear the shake in his voice as Jaemin continues to swear.

“Fuck! I just spilled Red Bull all over my lap. Fuck!”

“Please pull over.”

“There’s nowhere to pull over. I haven’t seen anything for miles, Chenle.”

“Just pull over on the side of the road, you moron! Get some sleep, miss working with your dad. Take care of yourself.”

“He’ll have my ass, I can’t. He’s holding me to this one. He’s threatening to send me to military school if I don’t stick to the shit he wants me to do. He fucking hates it when I’m out with Hyuck. He’ll think we were getting up to something while we were out of town.”

Chenle’s heaving in a panic, struggling to find the words he wants to say to Jaemin.

“He’d rather have you be a little late than have you crash your fucking car! You’re costing him less money than car repairs, stupid! Just pull over and go to sleep!”

“I’ll be fine, just keep talking to me.”

Chenle’s quiet for a while. 

“You didn’t fall asleep on me…..did you?” Jaemin asks. 

“No, no. I’m still here, sorry. How was the trip?”

Chenle’s trying to calm himself as he grabs his coat off of the back of his chair. He can’t quell the anxiety as it constricts his throat. Jaemin is croakily rambling to him about how Hyuck almost got them kicked out of the hotel as Chenle pulls on his shoes. He’s cursing the oncoming episode as he steps out the back door. Why did he have to be a banshee on this night of all nights? Hopefully it’ll keep Jaemin awake if he screams while they’re on the phone. 

Jaemin stops talking, but the buzzing concern in Chenle’s head is so loud he doesn’t notice until Jaemin coughs.

“Chenle, you okay?”

“Sorry, I’m just having an episode,” he manages to choke out from his constricted chest.

He holds back a small sob as he pads down the street to the field he sits in when he has to announce a death. His legs are shaking too hard, he knows he won’t make it to the small forest a few miles away. He’s trying to choke back tears as his feet hit the wet cement. 

His head’s buzzing so loud. He can barely hear anything as his feet pound against the pavement. The world is blurring with the onslaught of tears. He guesses he should’ve noticed how quiet Jaemin had gotten. Hindsight is always 20/20 though. 

“Jaemin, how’s the drive going?”

“It’s fine, promise,” Jaemin says. 

He sounds like he’s barely hanging on. Chenle gulps, feeling the dread overtake him. His body goes cold. He calls out again when Jaemin stays quiet. 

“Jaemin!!”

He’s heaving, ready to hyperventilate as he shouts again. 

“NA JAEMIN, YOU MORON, ANSWER ME!!!”

He should’ve noticed, in retrospect. Why else would the feeling overcome him that night? Why did he have to stop talking? The seconds feel like hours and Chenle can feel the dread building to a crescendo. It pounds away at every nerve in his body and he can hear nothing but his heartbeat in his ears. Why couldn’t he have just pulled over on the side of the road like Chenle asked him to? But that’s all in hindsight now. 

“JAEMIN PLEASE!”

Chenle cries as he drops the phone, weeping harder than he ever has during an episode before. He guesses he really can predict a death after all. At 1:22 am, Chenle feels his world crumble around him. Why doesn’t Jaemin just answer him back? 

He screams before he can stop himself. A sleepy neighborhood is woken by his anguished cry as another neighborhood 20 miles away is awoken by a honk and the screech of metal. 


End file.
